Among my other pursuits, I envision a Silicon Valley renaissance that brings a love of art, culture, place, and the divine spark alive and innate within our humanness out into the open.

To that end, I’m working on some ideas that revive Parisien style salons. Imagine curated one-of-a-kind intimate living art experiences. Seasonal dishes. Cross-fertilization of folks from the agriculture/foodie arena, the arts, and the techie financiers of the region.

Inspiration and pushing our edges is not a solitary act.

The Italian Renaissance wasn’t about one artist, one patron. It was a movement. A concerto with many players in the orchestra. I concur with this statement from the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, CA:

“While the voice of an idea may appear to be individual, in fact the emergence of new ideas is a collective effort.”

What the Silicon Valley settlers lack in comparison to those who aim for New York–probably less interest in the arts or finance–they compensate for in their commitment to innovation, science, and technology.

“If we really want to understand innovation and collaboration, we have to explore shared space. Consider Watson & Crick: How many experiments did they do to confirm DNA’s double helix? Zero. Not one. They built models based on other people’s data. These models were their shared space. Their collaboration in that shared space powered their Nobel Prize-winning breakthrough. If you don’t have a shared space, you’re not collaborating.”
Michael Schrage, MIT design researcher and author of “Serious Play“